So today, about a week after building my first PC, I made a rookie mistake of putting DDR2 memory into a DDR3 motherboard to try to get more memory. (Note that the DDR2 DIMM had no indication of it's generation, so I didn't know it was DDR2) After trying to boot up, all the fans spun up and seemed normal but I got no output to my monitor, so I just turned it off and took out the DDR2 DIMM. I booted back up and again, still no display output. I then plugged in my motherboard speaker to see if I was unknowingly getting an error code, and I was right. I got three long repeating beeps, separated by a short pause. I did some research and I'm pretty confident this means there is a problem with the memory, whatever it may be. I tried re-seating EVERYTHING on my motherboard while also clearing the CMOS multiple times. Still nothing. I then tried seating my memory in different combinations of sockets to see if that would work. I found that placing my memory in sockets A2 and B2 gave the system no beep code when booting up, but also still didn't output any video signal. I then tried seating it in sockets A1 and B2, and finally I got the system to post. BUT, I was running in single channel mode. (kill me now)
So as of now, I'm only running 4GB of DDR3 1600 RAM, when normally I would be running 8GB of DDR3 1600.
SO, on to my question for you experienced people.... Should I replace my motherboard and RAM, or is there something I can do to fix this? Thank you in advance,
- James
PS. here are the links to both my RAM and motherboard:
RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231428&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=
Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157570&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=